A Challenger to Republicans

As a former Republican activist and eight year Republican party city committee member - I even incorporated the Republican Party of the City of Virginia Beach, something the SCC records confirm - I continue to be shocked by the self-prostitution to Donald Trump that has been a party wide phenomenon in the GOP.  Trump's blatant dishonesty, hie rejection of science and  knowledge, and his public embrace of white supremacists and Christian extremists are anathema to what the Republican Party once claimed to stand for.  And I say this as one who grew up in a Republican family.  Were they still living, my parents and grandparents would be appalled at what the GOP has become and the horrid individual to whom so many - likely the majority - to whom both Republican elected officials and rank and file party members have sold their souls to. Decency, morality and any sense of supporting the rule of laws has been jettisoned by today;s Republicans,  And for what?  Merely staying in office and the associated perks have become the be all and end all for Republicans,  A column in the Washington Post throws out a challenge - a gauntlet, if you will - to those in the GOP who have sold their souls to Trump.  Here are highlights:

Republican senators, you know he is a danger to the republic. It is not too late to say so. It is not too late to help save your country, and maybe your self-respect.

You know it is wrong for a president to be spreading vile fictions about the death of a young woman 19 years ago. You know it is corrosive when he lies, and lies, and lies. And you know it is contemptible when a president, with his nation on edge as civil unrest spreads, can do nothing but threaten, divide and incite.How do I know you know? Because nothing in your careers, before the age of Donald Trump, hints at a willingness to tolerate such odious behavior.

Yes, I’m talking to you, Lamar Alexander. And you, John Barrasso. And Roy Blunt. Richard Burr. Susan Collins. Mike Crapo. Joni Ernst. Cory Gardner. Chuck Grassley. Mike Lee. Lisa Murkowski. Rob Portman. Jim Risch. Pat Roberts. Marco Rubio. Ben Sasse. Tim Scott. Dan Sullivan. John Thune. Roger Wicker.

And others in your caucus, too. Even you, Lindsey Graham. Even for you, it’s not too late.

Five years ago, could any of you have imagined excusing a leader who praised white supremacists, called his former opponent a criminal and a “skank,” mocked the weight and appearance of your fellow leaders?

Could you have imagined tolerating a president who sought to bend law enforcement, diplomacy and intelligence collection to his personal needs and whims?

You know, you all know, that he has imperiled the country and cost thousands of lives with his contempt for science and expertise.

Many of you have championed funding for the National Institutes of Health. Could you have imagined, five years ago, biting your tongue when a president told a country in peril that a virus would “magically” disappear? Would you have endorsed dangerous nostrums or mocked sound public health advice?

You know that he has eroded what turns out to be the surprisingly fragile system of checks and balances laid out in the Constitution that you have sworn to support and defend. Five years ago, you would not have tolerated a president spending money that Congress — your Article I branch — had explicitly decided not to spend, or shrugging off any attempt at congressional oversight, or firing inspectors general at will.

You know that he has dangerously eroded the United States’ security and standing in the world with his impulsiveness, his contempt for allies, his trashing of core American values and his naive embrace of America’s foes.

How do I know you know? Because many of you have spent your careers defending those values, building the institutions that undergird them, cultivating relationships across oceans. You shuddered when he trusted Russia’s leader over our own intelligence community, when he hailed the boss of the Chinese Communist Party as “a good man” and “a very, very good friend,” when he “fell in love” with the criminal strongman of Communist North Korea. Before the age of Trump, you could not have imagined staying silent in the face of such abominations.

So why do you stay silent now? Why does your colleague Mitt Romney seem so lonely in maintaining his moral compass?

It’s not hard to guess. You see your former colleagues Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, cast into political irrelevance for raising the most timid of objections. You think, better to stay viable. Keep your head down, don’t provoke the bully, and you can help restore sanity when he is gone.

But if he is reelected, restoring sanity may not be an option. The republic will be forever altered, as you know.

And you know this, too: Joe Biden would be a better choice for the country, at this moment. Of course, you disagree with many of his policies. You dislike some of the people he would bring into government. But he would respect the Constitution, the rule of law, simple human decency and the norms that have kept this experiment alive.

So why not hang together, announce you are voting for Biden, and help save your country? Explain that the president has left you no other honorable choice. You can still campaign for a Republican majority in the Senate to act as a check on a Democratic administration and its judicial picks. At best, you might help save your party and rescue your country.

At worst, you would meet the fate of Corker and Flake. That may seem unbearable to you. But if Trump is reelected, history will remember them far more kindly than those who, silently or actively, were complicit in the degradation of our democracy.

Mitt Romney: A Profile in Courage as the American Republic Dies

On 16 January 27 BC the Roman Senate gave Gaius Octavius (a/k/a Octavian) the titles of Augustus and Princeps and effectively gave him dictatorial power despite the fact that the Roman Senate continued to have a facade of authority.  With that grant of powers, the Roman Republic died.  Today, Senate Republicans with one exception took a similar action and gave Donald Trump a clear signal that (i) their oaths sworn on a bible to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution meant absolutely nothing to them, (ii) how history will view them similarly means nothing, and (iii) Trump is free to whatever he wants and is above the law except to the extent the House of Representatives continues - for now - to have the power over initiating spending bills to finance the federal government.  The lone Republican was Mitt Romney, a man I have never particularly liked but who showed that he both took his oath of office seriously and that he cared how history would view him. A piece in The Atlantic looks at Romney's unlikely courage - I will look at some of his speech which can be found here later in this post - and where America now finds itself. Here are article highlights: 

Mitt Romney is doing something nearly unheard of these days: He’s putting his country above his party. He’s voting his conscience when doing so comes at a cost. He’s not rationalizing weakness and timidity by prettying them up as virtues. He will vote to convict President Donald Trump, in an act of extraordinary political courage.

This decision would have negative ramifications for Romney in any era, but he faces particularly harsh consequences in this one, when political tribalism has never been more acute, when hating those who see things in politics differently than you do is fashionable, and when invective against perceived enemies is more emotionally powerful (and satisfying) then is affection for those you believe to be on your side.

Mitt Romney knows this, and he therefore knows the attacks on him will be vicious. He will be accused of being a traitor not only by [Trump] the president, a cruel and unforgiving man, but also by his fellow Republican lawmakers, the right-wing media complex, and even many of his constituents.

The truth is quite the opposite, of course. Romney, on whose presidential campaign I briefly worked in 2012, is doing something he believes is morally right even while knowing he will face quite a high cost, both professionally and personally.

To see so many Republicans who know better tie themselves into ethical knots to justify their fealty to Trump—and then to watch them lash out defensively when they are called on it—is a sad and pitiable thing.

But Republicans aren’t alone in being exposed by Romney’s admirable conduct. Maybe Democrats and those in the media who delighted in vilifying Romney in 2012. . . . might, in their private moments, rethink and even feel some remorse for what they did.

There’s an old hymn with which Romney is familiar, “Do What Is Right.” The chorus includes this line: “Do what is right; let the consequence follow.” It’s one thing to sing those words. It’s an entirely different thing to live them out.

Mitt Romney has lived those words, and history will honor him for having done so.

I heard Romney's speech while driving and it was truly remarkable and suggests that he is the last honorable Republican (assuming he remains in the GOP).  Here are some excerpts:

The allegations made in the articles of impeachment are very serious. As a Senator-juror, I swore an oath, before God, to exercise “impartial justice.” I am a profoundly religious person. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the President, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong. [T]he President’s insistence that they be investigated by the Ukrainians is hard to explain other than as a political pursuit. There is no question in my mind that were their names not Biden, the President would never have done what he did. The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the President committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a “high crime and misdemeanor.” Yes, he did.
 The President asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival.

The President withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so. The President delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders. The President’s purpose was personal and political. Accordingly, the President is guilty of an appalling abuse of the public trust. What he did was not “perfect”— No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security interests, and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine. [M]y promise before God to apply impartial justice required that I put my personal feelings and biases aside. Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented, and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience. [W]ith my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me. I will only be one name among many, no more or less, to future generations of Americans who look at the record of this trial. They will note merely that I was among the senators who determined that what the President did was wrong, grievously wrong.

Wow!  If history looking back on today shows that the American republic did, in fact died today,  Romney will stand out like those who opposed Hitler and other vile dictators, putting their oaths and consciences above pandering for political advantage. 

Biden 2020 as Romney 2012

A lengthy piece in Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball looks at the current Democrat presidential primary contest and draws parallels between Joe Biden's and Mitt Romney's 2012 primary victory.  The comparison is worrisome given that Romney went down to defeat in the general election - something I fear could well happen with Biden even as I and many others will vote for whoever is nominated rather than Trump (one friend has secured bumper stickers which say "The Democrat in 2020").  Yet some on the far left of the Democrat coalition may reprise 2016 and sulk at home or throw away their votes on 3rd party candidates and, by default, re-elect Trump who is the antithesis to all that they claim to support. Such behavior - one cannot call it reasoning - is mind numbing, but a true potential given the cult mentality of some on the far left. I truly do not believe the nation can survive another four years of Trump - at least not as a democracy - as the Republican Party displays more and more desire to push the country to a near autocracy.  Here are article highlights:

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Joe Biden doesn’t rhyme with Mitt Romney, although one of the words emblazoned on the side of Biden’s bus (malarkey) sort of does.

More to the point, we are beginning to wonder if the endurance of Biden at the top of the Democratic heap is beginning to resemble Mitt Romney’s endurance two cycles ago.

Despite his troubles, Romney seemed like the best bet to win the nomination for almost the entire campaign (except perhaps for when Rick Perry entered the race to great acclaim in August 2011).

The same may be true of Biden, although the race remains volatile. But Biden’s position is arguably stronger than Romney’s was at this time eight years ago.

In that 2012 race, Republican voters appeared at times quite willing to go with a different option than Romney. From late August 2011 through February 2012, Romney was surpassed no less than five different times in the national RealClearPolitics polling average, first by Perry, then Herman Cain, then Newt Gingrich (for two different stretches), and then, finally, Rick Santorum. Yet Romney always ended up back in the lead after his setbacks and emerged by the end of the first month of primary contests as the clear favorite to win the nomination (that year’s race started in January, not February). Romney benefited from split opposition as the primary season went along, with Santorum, Gingrich, and Ron Paul all cannibalizing the non-Romney vote.

Biden, meanwhile, has consistently led national polling. For a brief time in early October, Elizabeth Warren effectively tied Biden in the RealClearPolitics average, but Biden has since regained a decent-sized lead — he’s in the high 20s, with no one else within 10 points of his lead: Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) along with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg are all clustered within the low-to-mid teens.

In the first two contests, Biden trails in Iowa and New Hampshire. However, he leads in Nevada and South Carolina, which round out the February contests before March 3’s Super Tuesday kicks off a three-week barrage of primaries.

Democratic voters have been sampling their other options, but they have not coalesced around a clear alternative to Biden. Again, this is reminiscent of GOP voters’ inability to ever settle on a true Romney opponent.

Beyond the top four, the freest-spending candidates (by far) are two others: late-arriving Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York City mayor, and wealthy activist Tom Steyer. Neither have been able to crack the top tier anywhere, although they have surpassed many other candidates who have far more formidable political resumes but far less money to spend.

Bloomberg, who could spend a billion dollars on ads without making a dent in his personal fortune, is pursuing an unusual strategy, declining to seek the breadth of donor backing currently required to qualify for debates and focusing on building his support nationally as opposed to in the early states. It is an unusual strategy that we don’t think will work — ultimately, we’re skeptical that Democrats are all that interested in buying what Bloomberg is selling, and whoever does well in the early states will bask in the glow of free media more valuable than Bloomberg’s paid variety — but Bloomberg’s level of spending may end up being unprecedented for a primary.

The four polling leaders, and the two big spenders, are denying oxygen to the other candidates, of which there are many. That’s even after Gov. Steve Bullock (D-MT), former Rep. Joe Sestak (D, PA-7), and, most notably, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) dropped out of the race earlier this week.

Her exit arguably helps Biden the most. Not because Biden necessarily stands to inherit the bulk of Harris’s meager support, but because her exit removed someone who even in her diminished state seemed like a potential threat to him.

Biden’s top challengers right now — Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg, all of whom are whites elected from northern cities/states — do not appear to have any obvious appeal to black voters, particularly older black voters. Poll after poll shows Biden, who served dutifully and effectively as the first black president’s second-in-command, with an imposing lead with African Americans. Nationally, Quinnipiac University pegged his support at 43% with blacks and The Economist/YouGov at 48%, with the next-closest candidates struggling to break double figures.

Could black support shift? Sure. Again, let’s keep an open mind. But the possibility of dramatic change isn’t the same as the likelihood of dramatic change. Biden could do poorly in both lily white Iowa and New Hampshire and still retain significant black support, so long as his leading rivals remain Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg. The real threat to Biden is if one of these three win both Iowa and New Hampshire — and maybe even more diverse Nevada too — thus establishing themselves as the clear alternative to Biden. . .

Why are we so fixated on black voters? Because they form the bedrock of the Democratic Party, dominate the voting in many Southern states, and strongly influence the voting in many more.

Biden remains the most acceptable candidate available for black voters, at least at the moment, and those voters also tend to be more moderate-leaning, too.

As Theodore Johnson noted in our recent book, The Blue Wave, the growth of liberal/progressive self-identification among Democrats has been driven by whites, not blacks. With Warren and Sanders positioned clearly to Biden’s left, with Buttigieg currently showing so little appeal to blacks, and with the black candidates either struggling or exiting, Biden’s position with black voters remains formidable.

This is not to say Biden has been a strong candidate or has run a great campaign. He continues to show his age in public appearances and debates, and he is lagging his rivals in fundraising. That’s different than Romney, who raised the most among the Republicans in 2012 and had a well-funded Super PAC that his allies deployed to great effect at critical moments of the campaign (one wonders if the nascent Biden Super PAC could do something similar — he very well may need it).

The Democrats who fear Biden may not be up to the task of this grueling campaign could well be proven right, and if Biden were to be nominated only to lose to Donald Trump, parts of the left will make the same argument that parts of the right did in 2012: the party establishment sacrificed ideological purity and received nothing in return.

For the general election, it isn’t just who is chosen as the Democratic nominee. It’s how he or she is chosen, how damaged the nominee is from the process, and how fractured the party is once it’s over. Democrats being Democrats, some will be off sulking for a while.

And some primary voters may disappear in the fall: It’s easy to imagine some supporters of the outsider candidates, most notably Sanders, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D, HI-2), and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, falling by the wayside, even if the candidates themselves dutifully get behind the eventual nominee.

Still, Trump is a great unifier for Democrats, and that effect will kick in come fall, maybe even summer. We still see the general election as basically a 50-50 proposition, which is reflected in our early Electoral College ratings.

I cannot help but be very afraid of where things might end up come November 2020. Emigrating might yet be a plausible option. 

The Growing Popularity of Impeaching Trump

Loyalty can be fleeting in the political realm, especially among Republicans who have to date shown they will happily sell their souls to Donald Trump in exchange for avoiding a primary challenge from someone even more tawdry who is willing to stir up Trump's putrid core base of support. Thus, the minute allegiance to Trump becomes a political liability, the spineless congressional Republicans may decide it is in their best interests to throw Trump overboard. As noted in a previous post, anti-Trump animus appears to be powering Virginians to favor a Democrat takeover of control of the Virginia General Assembly. If the Virginia GOP suffers another electoral defeat next months, some Republicans with the spine of a jellyfish might be ready to re-calibrate their allegiance to the liar-in-chief,  Add to this the growing support for impeachment and Trump becoming a liability may become a reality sooner than some of his current sycophants think.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at what may be fueling the growing support for both impeachment and the removal of Trump from office.  Here are excerpts: 

In the first few days after House Democrats announced impeachment proceedings against President Trump, a series of anti-Trump conservatives published columns arguing that they were making a giant tactical error. Bret Stephens (“Pelosi’s Bad Impeachment Call”), David Brooks (“Yes, Trump Is Guilty, But Impeachment Is a Mistake”), and George Will (“The best antidote for a bad election is a better election”) all produced the same argument. Trump has done awful things, but impeachment will repel the public. Only an election can remove him.

The flaws in that argument have already become apparent. Impeachment is growing steadily more popular. . . . A commanding majority, 58 versus 38 percent, support the House’s impeachment inquiry. The fear that Trump somehow desired impeachment has been belied by essentially all the White House reporting, which shows the president alternating between depression and raging and flailing for a strategy.

The fear that impeachment would backfire was not crazy, but almost every piece of evidence so far has vindicated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s strategy. There are several reasons why the politics of impeachment have turned in the Democrats’ favor:

This isn’t Russia. The anticlimactic denouement of the Russia investigation weighed heavily on the impeachment skeptics. But the political impact of the Russia probe was smothered both by its dependence on Robert Mueller, . . . . and the sheer complexity of the affair. If the only important facts in the Russia story were Donald Trump negotiating for a several-hundred-million-dollar payoff from Vladimir Putin during the campaign and then lying about it, the outcry might have toppled him.

The Ukraine scandal is much simpler. There is a lot of evidence of wrongdoing, but it all revolves around a single narrative of Trump pressuring a foreign country to investigate his domestic rivals. And the narrative is controlled by Congress, which is willing to charge the president with a high crime, not a reclusive prosecutor who has decided it is improper for him to make any such accusation.

Even Republicans have trouble defending it. For all the public affirmations of support from Trump’s fervent base in the party and party-controlled media, even his supporters are harboring some qualms.

Anita Kumar has a revealing story quoting hard-core Trumpists — ones who stood behind him throughout the Russia scandal — expressing their belief that this time he went too far. “Russia was never real,” an outside Trump adviser says, “Ukraine is.”

The story can get worse. One thing that ought to have been apparent at the outset of this scandal, but which many people missed, is that a lot of people were involved. Turning American foreign policy into an episode of The Sopranos isn’t easy. You have a whole bureaucracy that’s used to operating along established channels, and distorting its functions in such a gross fashion sends ripples throughout the system.

There are going to be more witnesses and more records of communication. Trump is going to keep lying and saying crazy things. It’s not going to be easy to deprive the story of oxygen.

The politics can get worse, too. Republican support for Trump may be louder than the criticism. But the silence of many Republicans, not just the handful of quasi-independent voices, speaks volumes. Many Republicans are withholding judgment, perhaps criticizing impeachment as hasty, but not defending Trump’s behavior or ruling out removal if more evidence emerges.

Mitt Romney is planning to rally Republicans for impeachment in the Senate. Romney has a lot of respect in his caucus, and a lot of fame among the public. Can he get enough senators to remove Trump? Probably not. (Though “probably” is a lot different than “absolutely.”) But some measure of bipartisan support for impeachment is going to strengthen the message that Trump has done something seriously wrong.

This will hurt Trump’s reelection. The biggest mistake the impeachment skeptics made is their assumption that impeaching Trump are unrelated to, or at cross-purposes with, defeating him in 2020. “An election can save the country. An inside-the-Beltway political brawl will not,” predicted Brooks.

Most voters are locked in to one of the parties. The swing vote tends to be low-information voters with a hazy grasp of the issues. Impeachment is a signal to those voters that Trump has done something seriously wrong. It’s not a magic trick that works against every president — there needs to be misconduct people can easily understand, and which the news media covers as a serious scandal. This easily qualifies.

There’s no real political magic here. Having the news dominated by a scandal even many Republicans can’t defend, with a constant drip of damning new details, is extremely unhelpful for [Trump] the president.

I personally hope the momentum of growing support for impeachment continues.  Another wild card Republicans need to be gin worrying about too is how involved was Mike Pence?  I suspect Pence was up to his ears in the operation. 

Romney Directs Broadside at Trump;,Condemns Trump's Amoral Behavior

While it is far too late in the process and should have been even more searing - two and a half or three years ago would have been far better - in advance of his being sworn in as a member of the U.S. Senate Mitt Romney directed a broadside at Donald Trump's failures and tied them to Trump's amorality.  He did so in an op-ed in the Washington Post.  Here's a sampling:

It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not. When he won the election, I hoped he would rise to the occasion. . . . his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions last month, is evidence that [Trump] the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.

To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. . . . presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.

I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.

Needless to say, the op-ed provoked a Hitleresque temper tantrum on the party of Der  Trumpenführer, who along with his boot-licking sycophants now see Romney as a potential rival for 2020.  Articles in The Daily Beast and Politico both look at the new dynamic and paranoia gripping the foul occupant of the White House.  First, this from The Daily Beast:

Mitt Romney isn’t even sworn in as a U.S. senator yet, and he’s already triggered the heck out of President Stompy-Foot, the Toddler in Chief. Within hours of Romney’s searing op-ed in The Washington Post, Trump’s itchy Twitter finger got the best of him . . . .

Trump has always reserved his most bitter ire, vicious personal attacks, and gratuitous smears for Republicans, particularly those who dare to question his execrable judgment, daily outrages against conservatism, or hand size. Just as Trump insults and belittles our allies while offering Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and the rest of the Lil Dictators Club things like foot massages and sweet love notes, he attacks Republicans with a spleen rarely displayed toward Democrats.

Romney’s editorial is in many ways a bookend to his 2016 speech condemning Trump. . . . . That call to arms went sadly unheeded, and every prediction he made concerning Trump’s disastrous reign of misrule is playing out.

The alleged party of fiscal discipline bought a couple of trillion in debt for a tax bill benefiting a handful of hedge funds, billionaires, and corporations. . . . . Trump has demonstrated his comfort with failure and bankruptcy over and over again as a master rooking the greater-fools in a long cycle of borrow-and-bust business flops. He assumes he’ll be out of office when the bills come due.

Romney, in his speech, also highlighted Trump’s “bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics,” all of which have become staples of a performative presidency that is always more about heat than light. Every one of Romney’s predictions and calls about Trump from 2016 rang true then, and are proven out today.

And here’s the thing: Most Republicans knew Romney was right then and they sure as hell know he’s right today . . . . . Mitt Romney, the Enemy of the State, is a role I imagine he never thought he’d play in American political life, but the impact of his words is causing a full-fledged meltdown in the Trump-supporting media apparatus on the right.

Behind Trump’s bluster and swagger, and the 10-toothed roar of his arena faithful, the GOP just had its collective head kicked in during the 2018 campaign. The loss of 40 House seats, the trade-war disaster, a volatile stock market, a teetering economy, the reality of Mueller’s growing case against the Maximum Leader, and Trump’s foreign-policy recklessness have left Republican elected officials disheartened and shell-shocked.

Mitt Romney’s editorial is making the rounds for speaking the words that much of the GOP lacks the courage to put their names behind.  Many of the voices rising to condemn him are secretly whispering, “Mitt, it was great. I agree with you, but I have to defend him, you know. I’ve got to worry about a primary…”

The piece in Politico offers this:

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel connected with President Donald Trump by phone on Tuesday evening with some alarming news: Mitt Romney, her uncle, was about to publish an op-ed savaging him.

The next morning, as Romney’s op-ed took hold of the news cycle, McDaniel, Trump’s handpicked party chairwoman, sent out an even more strongly worded tweet scolding her uncle

In the op-ed, Romney argues that Trump "has not risen to the mantle of the office," blew up a delicate détente between the two men. And it immediately fueled suspicions among [Trump's] the president’s top aides that the incoming senator is up to something — maybe even keeping the door open to a 2020 primary challenge.

At a time when talk of a 2020 GOP primary has simmered, Trump aides said Romney, on the eve of his swearing in to the Senate, was seeking to define himself as the new leader of the Never Trump movement. . . . . And former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon argued that Romney had launched a “direct challenge to Trump for leadership.”

He [Romney] was well aware that the op-ed would ignite a media firestorm and that it would be seen as a key moment in his early Senate career, something he would be asked about repeatedly in the halls of the Capitol.

But as the new year neared, Romney found himself increasingly frustrated with [Trump] the president, the person close to Romney said.

Trump aides worry that a primary challenge would become an unwelcome distraction for the president’s reelection campaign and potentially turn the 2020 GOP convention into a circus. They note that no Republican president has won reelection after a contested primary and point to George H.W. Bush’s bruising 1992 primary against Pat Buchanan as evidence of the damage an incumbent can suffer.

Let's hope that Trump has a primary challenge - assuming he isn't removed from office before then - and that the GOP convention is a circus of epic proportions.

Trump Nemesis Mitt Romney Seen to Replace Orrin Hatch

With the announced retirement of Senator Orrin Hatch yesterday, one of my reactions is good riddance.  The man long overstayed his welcome - a view of 75% of Utah voters who did not want him to run for reelection - as evidenced by his rant that he supported working Americans even as he assisted in the passage of the Trump tax bill, perhaps the largest give away to the very wealthy and large corporations (few of which plan in increase employee salaries) in the history of the nation.  The other possible good news is that Mitt Romney will like run for the seat being vacated by Hatch and be elected.  Romney is one of the few Republicans who has maintained his attacks on Trump, perhaps because Trump is very disliked in Utah where Mormons, despite hypocrisy on a number of issues, find the amoral Trump distasteful.  While hardly my favorite individual, unlike most congressional Republicans, Romney still holds to at least a minimal sense of morality.  A Romney win would mean a GOP Senator could continue to bash Trump as has been the case with retiring Senators Corker and Flake.  A piece in Politico looks at the likely fun spectator sport that may exist if Romney takes Hatch's senate seat.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump had just returned from Utah last month when the president placed a call to his longtime nemesis Mitt Romney.

Trump was ostensibly trying to ease tensions between the two men, after a trip dominated by news reports that he was courting Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to run for reelection in order to keep Romney from seeking the seat. But the 10-minute chat only further raised suspicions within Romney’s inner circle that the president was out to stymie the former GOP presidential nominee’s political ambitions.

The conversation highlighted the fraught relationship between the Republican heavyweights — one that will now take center stage as Romney prepares a Senate bid in the wake of Hatch’s announcement Tuesday that he won’t seek another term, contrary to Trump's wishes. Should Romney run and win, as many expect, he will be poised to be Trump’s most prominent GOP foil, representing the wing of traditional Republicanism that the president has purposefully cast aside.

Romney has made little secret that he will be unafraid of taking on the president. The 2012 GOP nominee has informed a series of Republican Party donors, senators and power brokers in recent weeks that, while he isn’t looking to pick a fight with Trump, he is more than willing to speak out against him. During the 2016 campaign, Romney derided Trump as a “phony” and “fraud” and implored the party to nominate someone else.

Romney is also guided by frustration with the president, which he has long spoken about openly. In June, during an appearance at his annual Park City donor retreat, the former governor grew emotional when he implicitly criticized Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, arguing that the U.S. had an important humanitarian role overseas. In June 2016, speaking at the same event, Romney choked up while describing then-candidate Trump as often hurtful.

The former governor slammed the president over his handling of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer, and broke with Trump after the president endorsed accused child molester Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race.

Romney is wasting little time preparing for a Senate bid, though aides say an official announcement is likely several weeks away. Among his tight-knit circle, there is already talk about who will oversee his campaign, a job that will likely fall to longtime top aides Matt Waldrip, Spencer Zwick and Beth Myers.

Several other Republicans, including state Auditor John Dougall and state Rep. Daniel McCay, have been mentioned as potential candidates. But many Republicans in the state believe Romney, who is well-liked in Utah and has a sprawling fundraising network, would enter the race as the heavy favorite.

His needs would be minimal,” said former Utah Republican Party Chairman Bruce Hough, who has been in touch with Romney. “He would be as close to a consensus candidate as you can get.”

I continue to believe that the Republican Party is beyond saving, but should Romney be elected, he might at least slow the GOP's complete descent into something hideous. 

Trump Refuses to Release Tax Returns Before Election

I was raised being taught that if you had nothing to hide, then you did not act as if you were hiding something.  The corollary was that if you did have something to hide, then that explained why you were indeed hiding things.  Thus, I have to agree with Mitt Romney that the only reason that Donald Trump is refusing to release his tax returns prior to the November elections is because there is obviously something in them that he believes would be damaging.   We have already learned that Trump's talk about his charitable giving is a lie.  Therefore, one can only wonder what else he is hiding by refusing to release his returns.  Yes, he has the excuse of the supposed ongoing audit, but all of his returns cannot possibly be under audit.  Is Trump afraid that his returns might show that he pays an outrageously low tax rate, that his income is far less than what he boasts, or that he has suffered huge business losses. His intransigence certainly suggest some bombshell is waiting in the returns that he does not want his grievance filled, angry white supporters to see.  Politico looks at Romney's condemnation of Trump for seemingly trying to dupe American voters.  Here are highlights:

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tore into Donald Trump on Wednesday after it was reported that the party's presumptive nominee would not release his tax returns before the election in November.

"It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public service. Tax returns provide the public with its sole confirmation of the veracity of a candidate's representations regarding charities, priorities, wealth, tax conformance, and conflicts of interest," Romney wrote in a Facebook post.

Trump told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that he would not release his tax returns, despite telling radio host Hugh Hewitt in February 2015 that he would do so if he ran for the White House.

While acknowledging that it is not likely, Romney suggested "the potential for hidden inappropriate associations with foreign entities, criminal organizations, or other unsavory groups" as a risk "simply too great ... to ignore for someone who is seeking to become commander-in-chief."

Romney blasted Trump's assertion that he could not release taxes while they are being audited, writing that there is "nothing that prevents releasing tax returns that are being audited."

"Further, he could release returns for the years immediately prior to the years under audit. There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump's refusal to release his returns: There is a bombshell in them," Romney said, repeating a line he used in February. "Given Mr. Trump's equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it's a bombshell of unusual size."

I hate to admit that I agree with Romney on anything, but in this case, I suspect he is right.

The Illusions of Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz

Yet another op-ed in the Boston Globe looks at Bernie Sanders' 2014 tax return and posits some on point questions (Sanders made more that we did, but paid quite a bit less in taxes - should we fire our CPA?).  The piece also looks at the dysfunction on the Republican side of the aisle in the personage of Ted Cruz, one of the most loathsome politicians in America today, yet who has "friends" only because Donald Trump is more widely feared/hated among the self-destructing GOP establishment.  First these highlights on Sanders:

So much of our politics is based on illusion. Something can look or feel a certain way but, on closer inspection, turns out to be untrue. Two examples, one from the Democrats and another from the Republicans, show the ways in which false assumptions and beliefs can mislead us.

Bernie Sanders is the socialist candidate for president, although he prefers the term “Democratic-Socialist,” since it makes it easier for him to sell Marxist social and economic theory to a nation brought up on free markets and rugged individualism. Sanders is a working-class champion fighting for tax fairness and against income inequality, or so we are led to believe.

Sanders waited until late in the day on Friday to release his 2014 tax returns, obviously hoping voters would overlook the news that he and his wife, Jane, paid an effective tax rate of 13.5 percent, or $27,653 in federal taxes on an adjusted gross income of $205,271.

When it was revealed that former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney paid 14 percent of his income in taxes in 2011, the news was greeted with howls of protest from the left.

Sanders’ six-figure income puts him in the 28 percent bracket for married joint filers. He cut that rate by more than half by taking more than $64,000 in deductions — all perfectly legal, but no one expected the redistributionist to redistribute less, on a percentage basis, than a prominent member of the capitalist class.

Sanders is near the top 5 percent of all Americans in terms of income. The core of the Sanders campaign is getting the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share. Such high-minded principles should also apply to socialists making more than $200,000 a year.

The column then directs its focus to the loathsome Ted Cruz:

No one seems to have more fake friends these days than Cruz. The Texas senator is the most unloved person in the US Senate. Yet, as the front man for the Stop Trump movement, he has become a vessel of hope for Republicans who think he is the less bad thing of a pair of bad things. No one better exemplifies this attitude than Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who famously compared the choice between Trump and Cruz to being shot or poisoned.

In Tuesday’s New York primary, Trump crushed Cruz. The math says it is now impossible for Cruz to accumulate the delegates he needs in the remaining contests to win on the first convention ballot. What a difference from two weeks ago, when on the night of his double digit win in Wisconsin, Cruz declared, “We’re winning because we’re uniting the Republican Party.” 

A winning campaign for the White House needs to be built on something more than the absence of Trump. It requires real friends, not fake ones.

The Frightening GOP Base Is In Revolt

The GOP establishment is belatedly learning that there are very real and frightening consequences to inviting ignorance embracing Christian extremists, racists, nativists, and those fighting a rear guard action against modernity into one's political party in droves while driving rational, logic based members out.  Yes, turning out the Christofascists and white supremacists over the years helped win elections in the short term, Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and George W. Bush's anti-gay agenda in 2004 are examples, but once the barbarians are through the gates, they can prove to be beyond control.  This is the lesson now playing out on the national stage much to the shock of sane Americans and nation's around the world.  Indeed, to many, America must look like an insane asylum where the patients have overwhelmed the orderlies and medical staff.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the unraveling of the GOP and the lunacy of Trump supporters rallying to a man who has offered ZERO policy plans and relies on sound bites and vulgarity.  Here are excerpts:

From Michigan to Louisiana to California on Friday, rank-and-file Republicans expressed mystification, dismissal and contempt regarding the instructions that their party’s most high-profile leaders were urgently handing down to them: Reject and defeat Donald J. Trump. 

Their angry reactions, in the 24 hours since Mitt Romney and John McCain urged millions of voters to cooperate in a grand strategy to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy, have captured the seemingly inexorable force of a movement that still puzzles the Republican elite and now threatens to unravel the party they hold dear.

In interviews, even lifelong Republicans who cast a ballot for Mr. Romney four years ago rebelled against his message and plan. “I personally am disgusted by it — I think it’s disgraceful,” said Lola Butler, 71, a retiree from Mandeville, La., who voted for Mr. Romney in 2012. “You’re telling me who to vote for and who not to vote for? Please.”

“There’s nothing short of Trump shooting my daughter in the street and my grandchildren — there is nothing and nobody that’s going to dissuade me from voting for Trump,” Ms. Butler said.

The furious campaign now underway to stop Mr. Trump and the equally forceful rebellion against it captured the essence of the party’s breakdown over the past several weeks: Its most prominent guardians, misunderstanding their own voters, antagonize them as they try to reason with them, driving them even more energetically to Mr. Trump’s side.

As Mr. Romney amplified his pleas on Friday, Mr. Trump snubbed a major meeting of Republican activists and leaders after rumblings that protesters were prepared to demonstrate against him there, in the latest sign of Mr. Trump’s break from the apparatus of the party whose nomination he is marching toward.

As polls showed Mr. Trump likely to capture the Louisiana primary on Saturday, the biggest prize among states holding contests this weekend, the party establishment in Washington seemed seized by anxiety and despair. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, a long-running gathering of traditional conservatives, attendees feared that they were witnessing an event that has not occurred in more than a century: the breaking apart of a major American political party.

Steve Forbes, the publisher and two-time Republican presidential candidate, summed up the mood at the event. “Parties,” he said, “don’t usually commit suicide,” suggesting the party was well on its way with Mr. Trump.

The problem, for figures like Mr. Forbes and Mr. Romney, is that Mr. Trump’s supporters seem profoundly uninterested at the moment with the image, expectations or traditions of the Republican Party, according to interviews with more than three dozen voters, elected officials and operatives. They are, in many cases, hostile to it.

Voters have not taken kindly to the recommendation, describing the request as a patronizing directive from an elite figure who thoroughly misunderstands their feelings of alienation from the political system. (Soon after, Mr. McCain endorsed his remarks.)

Conservative talk radio shows lit up Friday with incensed callers who said they were “livid,” “mad” and “on the verge of tears” as they listened to Mr. Romney scoldingly describe what he called Mr. Trump’s misogyny, vulgarity and dishonesty, and urged them to abandon him.

Frustrated Republicans seized on Mr. Romney’s status as a party insider who was insulated from the realities, indignities and rage of average Americans headed to the polls this year. “He’s an establishment figure,” said Faith Sheptoski-Forbush of Romulus, Mich. “So that’s what you get.”

For years I was a Cassandra of what would happen to the GOP.  My concerns were dismissed and, after I came out, I was dragged through the mud and ridiculed for my "life style choice."  The current GOP deserves every bit of its misfortune and self-inflicted suicide. 

Did Trump Really Suggest that Romney Would Have Offered to Give Him a Blow Job?

Just when you think the GOP death spiral can get any more bizarre or ugly, Donald Trump proves you wrong.  In response to Mitt Romney's take down of Trump today, The Donald lashed back and said "“He was begging for my endorsement,”  . . . “I could have said, ‘Mitt, drop to your knees.’ He would have dropped to his knees.”  Trump indeed make junior high play ground bullying look sophisticated and genteel.  The man is crude, vulgar and obnoxious.  Yet, evangelical Christians are flocking to him and, as a result, showing their own hypocrisy and idiocy.  Here are details from The Raw Story:

According to conservative radio host Andrew McKay, Republican evangelical voters should not choose Donald Trump because he suggested that former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney offered to give him oral sex.

“He was begging for my endorsement,” Trump said. “I could have said, ‘Mitt, drop to your knees.’ He would have dropped to his knees.”

Following the speech, MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts asked McKay, who hosts a radio show in Pensacola, for his reaction.

“We live in an area that styles itself as being very Christian, lots of churches, evangelical voters, Baptists, Catholics, this whole area is dominated by religion,” McKay explained. “And I think they have to all ask themselves the question, do they want someone who gets up there and says that a former presidential candidate for their party got down on his knees and offered to blow him?”

“That was the style of the candidate that you want to elect as your nominee?” he asked. “That’s what a lot of people are struggling with.”

Mitt Romney Hints ‘Bombshell’ in Trump’s Taxes

In all of the political noise in the wake of the Nevada caucuses results and the pundit class still talking about Hillary's private e-mail server, The Daily Beast has picked up on why Donald Trump is resisting calls that he release copies of his tax returns.  Failed presidential candidate and vulture capitalist Mitt Romney suggests that Trumps tax returns may contain some "bombshells."  Romney conjectures that Trumps tax returns might reveal (i) that Trump pays an excessively low rate, (ii) that he isn’t worth the $10 billion he claims, and/or (iii) that he hasn’t given as much to veterans’ charities as he boasts.  Here are article highlights:

Mitt Romney suggested Wednesday there may be a "bombshell" within Donald Trump's tax information.

The Republican front runner has been "aggressive in avoiding any discussion of taxes," Romney told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. "Frankly I think we have good reason to believe that there's a bombshell in Donald Trump's taxes."

Asked by Cavuto what problems he envisions in Trump’s taxes, Romney suggested the numbers might reveal that he pays an excessively low rate, or that he isn’t worth the hefty $10 billion he claims, or that he hasn’t given as much to veterans’ charities as he boasts. "Donald Trump has said he's the best in the country for the disabled veterans and for the disabled generally,” Romney said. “Well, if his taxes show that he hasn't made any contributions to the disabled veterans, or to the disabled generally, that would be a big issue."

The former Republican Massachusetts governor, who has yet to endorse a candidate, was subjected to intense tax scrutiny during his failed 2012 presidential run against Barack Obama. Now that he has assumed an elder statesmen's role for the party, Romney believes the GOP candidates should undergo similar tax vetting.

Trump's response:  Mitt Romney,who totally blew an election that should have been won and whose tax returns made him look like a fool, is now playing tough guy.

I always believe that if you have nothing to hide, then way act like you do.  Time will tell whether Trump is even more of a fraud then some of us already believe him to be.